Do AI assistants name B2B vendors, or only how to choose?

It depends on the question and the industry. In a first look at 32 buyer questions across 8 B2B industries, an AI assistant named at least 5 businesses in every one of the 16 answers to a “who should I use” question. Asked how to choose, it named multiple providers in 2 of the 8 industries, fintech and healthcare. In 5 of the 8 it named none, and in e-commerce it named only a payment method. In 7 of the 8 “how do I choose” answers it also pointed the buyer to an outside source, such as a review site, a directory, a ranking or a rating body.

This is a small first look, not a ranking. The assistant was Claude, answering each question once from what it already knew, without web search, on Oct 12, 2026. That is not how the assistants in our usual scans answer, so the section on web search below matters. We don’t name the businesses it named: only counts and kinds of site are given here.

How did we run this?

We wrote 4 questions for each of 8 industries a business might buy from: B2B software, marketing agencies, IT services, fintech, e-commerce brands, healthcare, legal and consulting. Each industry got the same four shapes of question, in the same style as our free AI visibility checker:

• two “who” questions, for example “What is the best managed IT services provider for a small business in the US?” and “Which CRM would you recommend for a small B2B sales team?”;
• one “how do I choose” question, for example “How do I choose a marketing agency?”;
• one “what should I ask” question, for example “What should I ask a business law firm before hiring them?”.

That is 32 questions, each answered once.

How we counted. For each answer we listed the specific businesses it named, and separately the sites it told the buyer to use. A business named twice in one answer counts once. A parent company and its own brand count as two. Review sites, directories, rating bodies and regulators go in the sites list, not the business count. A payment method offered as an option is counted as a name; that happened once, in the e-commerce “how do I choose” answer, and we say so where it matters. The lists for these no-search answers were recorded by the assistant that answered them, and we have not independently re-extracted them. In the searched study further down, the firms in each answer were extracted separately, by a second model. The two kinds of count were produced differently, so we don’t compare counts across them, only whether any firm was named.

Do AI assistants name vendors when a buyer asks who to use?

Yes, every time we asked. All 16 “who” answers named at least 5 businesses, and one named 20. Across them it named 163 businesses in total.

What happens when the question is “how do I choose”?

The count falls from 163 names across the 16 “who” answers to 25 across the 8 “how do I choose” answers. 24 of those 25 sit in two answers, fintech and healthcare. The other is the payment method in the e-commerce answer.

Two readings, with one answer each, so treat both as a hunch rather than a finding:

• Fintech and healthcare walked through the market. The fintech question asked about “a payments provider” and the answer sorted well-known options by how you take payments. The healthcare question asked about “a healthcare provider network for my employees” and the answer listed insurers, benefits brokers and benefits platforms. Both asked about a particular kind of thing to buy, and each answer’s way to choose was to look at who sells it.
• The rest explained a process. The B2B software question was broad (“How do I choose B2B software for my company?”). The answer was a step-by-step buying process and named no vendor. The e-commerce question was about trusting any brand. The four service industries got process answers too: define what you need, check references, read the contract.

One way to read this is that it depends less on products versus services than on how specific the thing the buyer asks about is. B2B software is a product, yet it behaved like the services here. We can’t tell from 32 answers which part of the question made the difference.

Where do assistants send buyers instead?

IT services shows it most clearly. It had the fewest names in the “who” answers (6 and 5), and 3 of its 4 answers told the buyer to use a review site, a trade list or a member directory. One answer said there isn’t one best provider nationally, and that a regional provider is usually the better fit. The assistant treated the directory as part of the answer.

It was not only IT. Across all 32 answers, Clutch came up in 5, Google reviews in 3 and G2 and Capterra in 2 each. G2 and Capterra, the two software review sites, came up in the B2B software “how do I choose” answer and in one healthcare “who” answer. Other sites named were trade lists, member directories, referral services and consulting rankings, once or twice each. In the fintech “how do I choose” answer, the one of the 8 without an outside source, the assistant named providers itself.

Does web search change this?

We saw a different pattern in our searched data, though the two sets can’t be compared directly. Our own scans use ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity through their APIs with web search, so the apps can answer differently. In our Oct 12, 2026 industry study, with web search on and a city in every question, 17 of 27 answers for accounting firms and 24 of 27 for law firms named at least one specific firm. Those 27 answers are three “how do I choose” style questions (how to choose, what to look for when hiring and what people usually ask before hiring) × 3 assistants × 3 US cities. In the no-search set above, the legal and consulting “how do I choose” answers named none.

Several things differ between the two sets: the assistant, web search, national questions versus city questions, the industries and the wording (four questions per industry here, six in the study). So we can’t say which of those, if any, explains the difference. They are two observations to hold side by side. The study hub has the searched-answer data for accounting and law.

What can a B2B firm check for each pattern?

Nothing here shows that any step changes what an assistant says, and nothing here is a promise of results. These are checks the answers themselves point to.

If you sell software or another product, your buyers may get a list of named options even when they only ask how to choose.

• Ask your own category’s questions, both “best … for [your buyer]” and “how do I choose [your category]”, and see whether you’re in the list or who is.
• Say plainly on your site what you’re for and which buyer or situation you fit. The fintech answer sorted options by situation.
• Publish what the “what should I ask” answers list as buyer checks: security, compliance, contract and exit terms. Say only what’s true.
• Check your profile on the review sites buyers are sent to, such as G2 and Capterra, and keep it accurate. Some of these sites also sell placement; we wouldn’t pay for it on the strength of a first look.

If you sell a service, you may be named when the buyer asks “who”, and the directories may do part of the work.

• Check your listings on the directories and review sites in your field, for example Clutch for agencies and IT firms. Keep them accurate.
• Say where you work, which clients you suit, and how you price. The answers told buyers to check regional fit, response times and pricing structure.
• Keep your own pages answering the checks buyers are told to make: references, who handles the work, and contract terms.
• Look at the searched-answer data for your field too, where it exists, because it may look different from this first look.

How do I see what AI says about my own category?

Ask the four question shapes above about your business type, and ask more than once, because one answer is one sample. Our post on how much AI answers change from one week to the next shows how much they moved in our own scans. Our guides on what GEO is and what to fix first cover the work that follows.

Free Quick Scan: 6 of your buyers’ questions on ChatGPT and Perplexity, 12 answers and who AI named instead of you.